Интернетот како сфера на јавната политика

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Being a master of metaphors

Deliberative democracy and the digital public sphere: Asymmetrical fragmentation as a political not a technological problem

Women’s Activism and the Public Sphere:Introduction and Overview Valentine M. Moghadam (bio) and Fatima Sadiqi (bio) The articles in this special issue were among those presented at a workshop we organized for the Sixth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, which took place from 16—20 March 2005, in Montecatini, Italy. The purpose of the workshop was to examine the proposition that the public sphere in a number of MENA countries is changing and civil society becoming "feminized" due to women's greater social participation, the proliferation of women's organizations, their involvement in or initiation of public debates and national dialogues, and their access to various forms of media. Twelve papers were submitted and presented at the workshop, leading to a very lively discussion, but only a few could be included in this special issue. The papers lay out the complexity of various versions of women's activism, their intricate relations with public space, and how that plays out in contemporary political and legal debates.In what remains, we provide a brief introduction to the guiding ideas and an overview of the papers' arguments and findings. In Habermas' conceptualization, the "public sphere" is a modern institution and a set of values that brings private persons together in public to engage in a context of reasoned debates (Habermas 1989). Civil society—the non-state realm of associational life, civility in public discourse, and state-society relations—constitutes an important part of the [End Page 1] public sphere of media and other forums of public opinion. As feminist scholars have pointed out (Fraser 1996; Lister 1997), civil society and the public sphere historically were cast as male, although women's suffrage and the women's movement expanded, democratized, and feminized these spheres in the course of the twentieth century. The public sphere has been conceptualized largely in connection with the single society and the nation-state, but processes of globalization suggest the emergence of a "global space" within which reasoned debates, associational activities, and collective action take place. This is the impetus for the new literature on "global civil society" (Florini 2000), the "transnational public sphere" (Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald 1999), "transnational social movements" (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997), "transnational advocacy networks" (Keck and Sikkink 1998), and "transnational feminist networks" (Moghadam 2005). A burgeoning literature on civil society, citizenship, and democratization has emerged in the context of Middle East Studies, in tandem with a body of work by feminist scholars (Brynen, Korany, and Noble 1995, 1998; El-Sayyid 1994; Norton 1995; Arat 1994; Brand 1998; Botman 1999; Joseph 2000; Moghadam 2003; Sadiqi 2003). As an earlier generation of feminist scholars noted for the West, the public sphere of politics in MENA has been cast as male and distinguished from the private sphere of women-and-the-family. Moreover, the state and the market have been long regarded as masculine domains. Rights of the citizen—limited for all in the authoritarian and neopatriarchal states of MENA—have been differentiated by gender (and religion). It is this state of affairs that is being contested by an emerging social and political constituency—women—who are motivated by aspirations for equality and enhanced rights and who also draw on international standards, conventions, and networks in support of their claims. As a social movement, women's activism in the public sphere uses strategies that do not reproduce Western frameworks but that feed into global synergy with their guiding cultural worldviews. It is only through understandings of intercultural worldviews and various meanings of "pragmatism" that MENA women's rights tactics can be appreciated globally (Sadiqi forthcoming). The papers in this special issue explore the changing nature of the public sphere in MENA and women's contributions to it, as well as women's involvement in the transnational public sphere, through an [End Page 2] examination of countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Jordan, where these changes have been observed. An examination of political developments over the past decade in MENA countries leads to the formulation of the following propositions. Proposition 1. The public sphere in a number of MENA countries is being engendered and feminized because of the emergence of women as political actors...

“Ideology and simultaneously more than mere ideology”: On Habermas’ reflections and hypotheses on a further structural transformation of the political public sphere

Democratic responsibility in the digital public sphere

Gripsrud, J. and H. Moe, eds. 2010. The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy. Goteborg: Nordicom, 167 pp (ISBN 978-91-86523-02-2) The concepts of 'the public', 'public sphere', 'civil society' and media regulation have dominated media studies for some time. Scholars have attempted to explore the nexus between regulation and the audience/public's access to the media/public sphere (Curran 2000; Eribo & Jong-Ebot 1997; McChesney 1999; Venturelli 1998). In most of these writings, regulation is seen as hindering access to the public domain and as stifling freedom of expression. However, these scholars are concerned with traditional media, (1) while the authors in The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy extend the critique to the digital public sphere. They examine the problems of regulation in a digitised environment and conclude that political and commercial interests take precedence in the crafting of media policy, mainly because end users of such digitised media are not perceived as a public (2) but as audiences or consumers. The issues discussed in this collection are relevant across the world, even though the digital public sphere in most Third-World countries is not as developed as it is in Europe, largely because of political, economic and technological challenges. In Chapter 1, Slavko Splichal grapples with the concepts 'public', 'public sphere' and 'civil society'. The author looks at the movement from the angle of one homogenous public sphere to many public spheres. He argues that the public may be 'dispersed physically but mentally/spiritually tied together' (p. 32). The public is distinguished from the crowd in that its members act rationally. The public is distinguished from public opinion, which safeguards against the 'misrule of those in power [and] is also a means of coercion in the hands of the majority against any minority of those who would not share the majority opinion' (p. 26). He adds that the public is only a social category, while the public sphere is the infrastructure which enables public opinion to flourish. Therefore the public's infrastructure is the public sphere. On the other hand, civil society is said to generate the public sphere and to enable citizens to wield power over those in power through 'public discussion and persuasion' (p. 30). He also rightly notes that through this persuasion and discussion 'civil society influences regulative forces of the state and corporate institutions' (p. 31). He aptly sums up the problem by stating: 'There is no public sphere without civil society, but there is also none without the public' (ibid.), then points out that the Internet popularised the concept of the public sphere and helped launch the notion of an international/global public sphere. However, this is debatable as stories broadcast via satellite, radio and digital technology before the advent of the Internet, were able to cut across geographical boundaries and spark debate worldwide. As Thussu (2006: xvii) argues: 'Although the Internet has received greater attention in recent public debates on international communication, television, being much more widely accessible, is perhaps more influential in setting the global communication agenda.' For example, The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon. Besides the above, Splichal (2010) corrects the misconception that all mass media are public spheres, by pointing out that some are not and that there are other actors (such as the state, political parties, interest groups, media gatekeepers and businesses) who are already in the public sphere to influence it. Finally, Splichal points out that the 'citizens qua citizen--either as publics or as audiences--are not among key actors in the public sphere anymore but rather, as in the old Lippman's theorization, spectators observing the public stage from the balcony'. In Chapter 2 Hannu Nieminem looks at global copyright law by taking a case study of the Finnish TVkaista. …

Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern “Truthiness” and Civic Engagement

Purpose. To determine the specifics of the impact of IT use on the economic and social spheres in Ukraine. To develop a mathematical model for evaluating and forecasting the impact of IT on these areas. Methodology. General and special methods of cognition were used in the research: mathematical formalization for evaluating and forecasting the impact of IT on the economic and social spheres, correlation analysis to establish multiplicative relationships of parameters and basic functions; comparison to establish the nature of the IT impact on the social and economic spheres; analogies to analyze the level of IT development in Ukraine and other countries; quantitative and qualitative comparison to analyze the level of social Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) use at enterprises by types of economic activity. Findings. It is proved that there are limiting factors to the growth of the positive IT impact, in particular the average level of income per capita. This is also evidenced by the comparison of agricultural and industrial regions of Ukraine, which indicated a significant gap in the introduction of IT in the countryside and the city. The weaknesses and successes of Ukraine in the implementation of IT are identified. The causes of hampering the positive impact of IT use on the development of social and economic spheres are indicated. A significant level of differentiation in the use of IT by business by types of technologies was proven. Originality. The peculiarities of the IT impact on the economic and social spheres in Ukraine are determined. The main feature is balancing between the development of IT technologies and social sphere and the state of stagnation of this process. A mathematical model for evaluating and forecasting the IT impact on the economic and social spheres has been developed; the intermediate results of its use have been given. Practical value. Recommendations for removing obstacles to the implementation of IT in Ukrainian social and economic spheres have been proposed.

The transformation of communication processes characterizes modern society due to the expansion of digital and internet technologies, especially in the form of Web 2.0, the development of the post-information society, and post-culture. The communication media space increasingly incorporates networks, digital technologies alter the public sphere as a shared communication platform, the presence of digital identities grows, filter bubbles and echo chambers emerge, and phenomena such as cancel culture, post-truth, and post-journalism rise. Communicative transformations are primarily linked to the impact of new digital media – online media and artificial intelligence, raising questions about how new convergent technologies change the public sphere and, consequently, communicative strategies. It is essential to address a series of questions, including how online communication influences offline communication and how the unconscious and symbolic actor – the digital algorithm AI – shapes specific features of social interactions. The negative impact of artificial intelligence, the spread of pseudoscientific knowledge, and the difficulty of their verification also remain significant factors. The article addresses the emergence of a new social actor – artificial intelligence – and the issue of digital identities that may not fully coincide with a real person or only partially coincide. The purpose of the article is to outline important communicative transformations caused by the development of modern digital media. The implementation of this purpose involves performing the following tasks: describing the main methodological approaches for analyzing the problem of communicative transformations, justifying their dependence on new digital media, and defining general communicative strategies through the emergence of new hybrid digital media. The article concludes that the development of digital technologies, especially AI, leads to communicative transformations in the public sphere, particularly through the formation of echo chambers, digital identities, virtualization, gamification, and blitz communication, shaping the processes of contemporary cultural changes.

Echo chambers, fake news, filter bubbles and algorithms have been framed as great threats to our contemporary democracies and public spheres. In the Nordic countries, the state plays an active role in sustaining democracy and the public sphere through culture- and knowledge policies. The Norwegian Government have over the last years presented a white paper on overall cultural policy and a library strategy document. Both documents address the effects of digital technology on democracy, and how culture institutions in general and libraries in particular can help sustain our democracies in changing times. In this article, we study these and preceding documents on culture- and library policies. We analyze how they address digital technology and how they see culture- and library policies as providing solutions to digital threats to democracy and the public sphere. Furthermore, we study what notion of democracy and the public sphere are prevalent in Norwegian cultural policies. The results show that the Government view culture as a remedy against a fragmented public sphere, and that libraries play a key role as providers of digital guidance and teaching.

The arrival of mobile internet services came with significant promise of a potentially democratic public sphere mediated through digital media technology. However, rather than achieving this promise, these technologies ushered in a new economic age: surveillance capitalism, which revolutionised propaganda and misinformation in ways which pose clear threats to civil order and democratic processes. This paper updates and integrates Jürgen Habermas's model of the public sphere and communicative rationality with the realities of surveillance capitalism's new economic logics and the ways in which they undermine the public sphere. (1) The selective distribution of content by sorting algorithms fosters cultures of insularity and antagonism which (2) fragment and disintegrate the sphere, contributing to the breakdown of public discourse into echo chambers and filter bubbles. Furthermore, (3) sorting algorithms facilitate the evasion of scrutiny as these individually selected messages bypass public attention and criticism. This lack of scrutiny encourages the use of (4) engagement-farming tactics like the use of inflammatory misinformation. This has often led to (5) patterns of migration; wherein users migrate away from the platform to find more corresponding information about the conspiracy or mythology in question – further breaking down public discourse. Lastly, answering the new revenue model's demand for content often results in (6) content from botnets, troll farms, and misinformation networks being platformed and circulated with little to no repercussions.

The Public Sphere

Searching social media and developing an effective communication perspective are two important aspects of managing a positive online presence and impactful messaging. Here are some tips for achieving both of these things by finding the right social media. Looking for goals, determining goals for using social media. Connect with friends and family, build a professional network, promote business, or participate in discussions on user-specific topics. For social media that have different user demographics, learn the key user characteristics of the target audience's platforms by highlighting the features and functionality offered by each platform. Platforms that have a lot of user interaction and engagement are more likely to build an effective online presence. Looking at various points of view, to avoid the digital era with the terms 'filter bubble' and 'echo chamber', you can actively seek information from various sources and different points of view. Follow social media accounts that represent a variety of views and participate in various discussion groups or forums. For steps users can follow to strengthen privacy, improve the quality of public opinion discussions, and build a more positive and inclusive social media environment.

Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern “Truthiness” and Civic Engagement